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Boldly Going to a Brave New World?

By Veronica Smith

When I was relatively new to cross dressing and still pretty nervous about it, I would sometimes try to justify or make understandable to my wife that which I myself did not truly understand nor even feel comfortable with. Once we went to a Star Trek demonstration at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. There were a lot of folks dressed up as characters from the various Star Trek shows. For no particular reason I turned to my wife and blurted out, "You know, I may cross dress, but at least I cross dress within the same species!" She took my hand and complimented me on my reasonableness.

Although I don’t consider myself a trekkie, I really liked Star Trek: The Next Generation and I’ve even followed the various spin-offs. One of the spin-offs had an episode this last season which really impressed me. A character (for reasons too complicated to go into here) underwent sexual reassignment surgery and remained female for just a few days until completing a business deal. After which time, the character had another operation and was restored to being male. True, we’re not talking about a human here, but the implication (especially by the doctor’s blasé attitude toward the whole thing) was that sex-change operations would become more mundane than appendectomies. And when you consider how within just fifty years SRS has moved from being a totally experimental procedure to an operation routine enough for some doctors to be able to perform three in a one day, it doesn’t stretch the imagination to envision a world where moving from one gender to another will be as easy as face lifts and tummy tucks.

Like the double-gender-crossing Ferengi in the television show, one’s gender will not only become optional, it could be transitory as well. Think of it! Rather than sneaking off to a convention and living en femme for just a few days, you could have a quick operation and really live en femme for days, weeks, even years, and change back when (and if) it suited you. Talking so whimsically about hopping back and forth between sexes must sound horribly shallow and dilettantesque to those for whom the acquisition of the proper gender is the most profound desire. But I suspect many would love gender fluidity. After all, dabbling in the feminine is one way -- not the only way -- of looking at transvestism. And if medical science can enhance such exploration, that’s progress.

But with medical progress we’re not only looking at fluidity, but diversity as well. Recently, I wrote about a conversation Cindy Martin and I had about hormones. Cindy implied that hormones should primarily be for people who are transitioning. Whereas, I felt that if someone truly owned her body, she should be given hormones (with medical supervision) to customize her body any way she wanted. I suggested that if more people in the TG community felt freer to modify their bodies, the spectrum of body types would not merely be limited to the man/woman alternatives, but would broaden immensely. Shortly after writing that, I came across an article that convinced me that the spectrum is already broadening in ways I would never have imagined.

In Transgender Tapestry (Issue 83, Summer 1998, p. 57), J.J. Allen describes Dr. Tess Cowell, a person who was born male but who has had cosmetic surgery, breast implants and even penile inversion. The accompanying photo shows an exotic-looking woman. However, unlike most women born in men’s bodies, she has kept her testosterone-producing testes by having them surgically brought within her body and she has not taken female hormones for the past three years. The writer refers to Dr. Cowell as transgendered but is unsure as to what that means exactly. Could Dr. Cowell testify she’s a woman? Or even would she? One can certainly testify that Dr. Cowell has boldly gone where no one’s gone before in customizing her body. And she has customized it to fit her own needs and standards, not Dr. Benjamin’s or anyone else’s. As medical technology advances, the options for body customization can only multiply and with such customizations, genders will diversify between the two end poles of masculine-man and feminine-woman. There will be a shift; it’s happening already, and a great multitude of variations between the two gender extremes will spring forth. O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!

"But when gender becomes so fluid and diverse," asked my down-to-earth and earthy wife after I read the above to her, "what does that mean about sex?"

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